The main thing I hope I see with AoC...

[Clatu]

is the return of an actual community.

I returned to WoW about 3 weeks ago out of utter boredom and last night I finally just got irritated with the whole thing. Blizzard has done the most amazing job of creating a truly negative community that it's mind blowing. No one ever has anything good to say about anyone else. The community on every server is dominated by selfish, socially inept, uninformed, morally suspect jackasses. As you can see I'm in full rant =)

Instancing is the blame for all of it. You can be a socially inept smacktard when you can level to the max without ever grouping. Then if you do choose to group on occasion who cares if you ninja loot anything because the community is so fractured 95% of the people you're level won't know you're a tool. If by some miracle word does get out about your wonderful grouping rep then you can just mail all your gold to an alt and max another character out in no time. Hell with all the UIs WoW has the game practically plays itself anyways.

I want little to no instancing in AoC. I want to have to ask for help if the shit hits the fan. I want people to ask for my help. I want to actually have to group consistently from the beginning to truly be successful. I want to actually have to sell my crap to people again face to face so to speak. Why? Because these things build community damnit!

Back when I played EQ (pre PoP) and DAoC you'd read the message boards and see posts thanking people who went out of their way to help others. General chat wasn't littered with rampant stupidity and insults to whatever someone else had to say. Hell, your friend list had people on it who weren't in your guild! OMG shocking isn't it!



I feel much better now =). I guess I must be weird to the generation of online gamers who started with WoW, but I play online games to play with people. Otherwise I'd just play a rpg and log into a yahoo chat room if I wanted to insult random people. It would save me a monthly fee.

[Torr]

I think building a community starts with your guild. I know there are alot of jerks in WoW, and I've seen a little of it but... I didn't have as much of a negative experience as other's had. That's probably because I started in a guild much like this one, created about a year before release, and played with that guild all the way until the day I quit. That guild still plays the game, and they are pretty much really good people.

I quit WoW more for the game's design then for the community. I'm not blind to people's complaints about community, but I think I played so much with guildmates that I had a sheltered experience in WoW. It is true that WoW never had the kind of community DAOC had, though DAOC's community was a fairly high standard I thought. WoW wasn't much worse than SWG though... I found SWG to be filled with friendly people, but it was so disconnected that sometimes it felt like there was no community at all. Again, it might come down to the guild because I didn't enjoy my guild there at all.

So to me, if you can build a fairly decent sized guild that caters to a community atmosphere, I think that's all you can really do as your part to contributing to a greater overall game community.

[Argus]

Originally Posted by Clatu

I want to actually have to sell my crap to people again face to face so to speak. Why? Because these things build community damnit!

Thats a good idea! I hate what auction houses do to the community

I actually want my crafter to setup shop and sell things

[Ethram-Fal]

One thing I've never been a fan of is item-based games, such as WoW. Basically the more days you go without sleep to play the game day in day out, hour after hour, which makes you better than others with the same level just because you have no life and can get the "L33t3st GEAR"...

Games with RISK promote unity, and forces you to be good at pvp. Games like WoW, lend a hand to the weak minded individual letting them beat or hang with people who are actually good at PvP in MMORPG games.

And I agree, I hope there isn't near as much "instance" pvming in AoC. I want everything to be open, attackable, risky, and fun.

[Sleeky]

Originally Posted by Clatu

I returned to WoW about 3 weeks ago out of utter boredom and last night I finally just got irritated with the whole thing. Blizzard has done the most amazing job of creating a truly negative community that it's mind blowing. No one ever has anything good to say about anyone else. The community on every server is dominated by selfish, socially inept, uninformed, morally suspect jackasses. As you can see I'm in full rant =)

I can agree with you Clatu. The basic fault I think I've been able to distill the game down to is that the playerbase as a whole really could care less what happens in the game world.

Example (and it's been quite some time since I played WoW, so someone correct me if I'm wrong):

Currently the big new in the WoW gameworld is The Scourge Invasion. So will the alliance side for example need to work together to drive back this new invasion?

No. All it means is there there is another dungeon to farm for gear. And that is all the game is about...farming.

The player doesn't adventure in the World of Warcraft, he/she farms it. The player has no need to worry about defending, Stormwind for example, because the Devs will never create a situation where Stormwind could fall. The players know this....so all they can concern themselves with is farming.

Originally Posted by Clatu

Instancing is the blame for all of it. You can be a socially inept smacktard when you can level to the max without ever grouping. Then if you do choose to group on occasion who cares if you ninja loot anything because the community is so fractured 95% of the people you're level won't know you're a tool.

I don't believe that Instancing itself is the prime cause for the behavior, yet it does exasperate it when the general populous could care less what happens to the game world.

Originally Posted by Clatu

I want little to no instancing in AoC. I want to have to ask for help if the shit hits the fan. I want people to ask for my help. I want to actually have to group consistently from the beginning to truly be successful. I want to actually have to sell my crap to people again face to face so to speak. Why? Because these things build community damnit!

I can't be certain but I believe there will really only need to be two reasons for instancing. Guilds will be able to build two guild....settlements for lack of a better world and each would be instanced. 1) a Battlekeep in the PvP zones. I feel it would be necessary to have this instance off from the rest of the server just to ensure that one guild won't have the advantage of having the "better ground" to build the battlekeep before their foes. This would keep things on a level playing field. and 2) a guild settlement that is constantly harassed by NPC mobs. I feel this would be sectioned off form the rest of the server for the same reasons. a level playing field.

However it is my belief that you don't need an oppressive game mechanic (take one step outside the safe zones an immediately have it cut off ) to build a community. Communitys (the common unity...Get it? ) form for 1 or 2 of the following reasons. 1) safety in numbers and 2) shared resources.

This can be achieved with a faction type method. Pick a side and if you don't do what you can to help your side and chose to just fatten you own bank accounts....the faction dies. THIS I believe is an effective way to build a community.

Originally Posted by Clatu

Back when I played EQ (pre PoP) and DAoC you'd read the message boards and see posts thanking people who went out of their way to help others. General chat wasn't littered with rampant stupidity and insults to whatever someone else had to say.

Or that same message board could be used to coordinate the effort of different groups/guilds to to benefit the faction as a whole.

Think of it this way: The American faction, British faction, Russian faction and Canadian,Norwegian,free-French, factions would need to work together to counter the actions of the German faction and Italian faction (as well as the Japanese faction). It would therefore be necessary for the various Generals in this conflict (re: Guildleaders) to work together to achieve a beneficial outcome.

See where I'm going with this?

[Kaneyda]

The other reason for the poor community is the diversity of players in WoW. We all know how popular Warcraft is, and thats because it successfully combines aspects of different MMO's so that it appeals to litterally everyone.

So you have people that want to RP, playing with hard core PvP-ers. People have little in common, and they are bound to clash. Others games such and EQ (and hopefully AoC) have one style of gamer. Especially In EQ, if you couldn't put up slow levelling, complete relliance on groups and next t no PvP, you were gone in seconds. Whereas in WoW, lots of types of games got to lvl 60, and joined guilds with each other.

[Rohanna]

Woohoo, Im hearing ya there Clatu! Community Community Community.... now it seems every Tom, Dick and Harry plays in the MMO communities bogging them down with their BS negativiaty.
I tried in my EQ2 guild to make most of the members bigger than the others by not faultering into the BS. But for the most part alot of the young males failed to follow suit by having the"mines bigger than yours debate" all over the chat channels. I explained it not only makesd your guild look bad but you as a person look bad.... hence going onto various debates on what should or shouldnt be said in public channels.
Well community in my mind is contagious....if surrounded by negative thoughts eventually negative thoughts will over power. But be nice and spread your individual positive reinforcement around and it will also be caught by surrounding people. I always loved hearing from other players, "hey I remember you, you helped me get my last named boss for my bone bladed claymore back when I was a lvl 40" or "hey arent you the person who ran that server event back in Decmeber, that was alot of fun!"
Lead by example I thought was best. Sometimes just taking the time to get involved is all it takes to spread the "nice" disease arround a bit rather than just having diareah of the mouth which for the most part ends in hindering the server community of positive things to say about all the parties involved in contributing to it.